Saraiki people

Saraikis
سرائیکی
Painting of Saraikis (or Seraikis) from a series of twelve paintings, ca.1850
Total population
c. 20 million
Regions with significant populations
Pakistan20,324,637
Languages
Saraiki
Religion

The Saraikis (Saraiki: سرائیکی) are a group of Indo-Aryan communities native to central Pakistan, primarily identifying with Saraiki language and a shared regional identity.

Mostly inhabiting southern Punjab and northern Sindh, as well as most of Derajat, located where southwestern Punjab, southeastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and northeastern Balochistan meet, the Saraiki regional identity arose in the 1960s, separating itself from the broader Punjabi ethnic identity; this was a result of a political movement, arising in 1962, to separate the Derawali, Multani and Riasti dialects from the Punjabi language, and to instead declare them to constitute a separate language for which the term Saraiki was adopted, hitherto only used for a Sindhi dialect spoken in northern Sindh.

The Saraikis follow several religions, though most are predominantly followers of Sunni Islam. A small minority of Saraikis follows Christianity in Pakistan. There used to be a large Hindu and Sikh minority, however majority of them migrated to India after Partition of India in 1947. These Hindus and Sikhs now have assimilated into larger Punjabi-speaking and Hindi-speaking populations.[need quotation to verify]

Etymology

The present extent of the meaning of Sirāikī is a recent development, and the term most probably gained its currency during the nationalist movement of the 1960s. It has been in use for much longer in Sindh to refer to the speech of the immigrants from the north, principally Siraiki-speaking Baloch tribes who settled there between the 16th and the 19th centuries. In this context, the term can most plausibly be explained as originally having had the meaning "the language of the north", from the Sindhi word siro 'up-river, north'. This name can ambiguously refer to the northern dialects of Sindhi, but these are nowadays more commonly known as "Siroli" or "Sireli".

An alternative hypothesis is that Sarākī originated in the word sauvīrā, or Sauvira, an ancient kingdom which was also mentioned in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata.

Currently, the most common rendering of the term is Saraiki. However, Seraiki and Siraiki are also commonly used.

Notable people

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Saraiki is the spelling used in universities of Pakistan (the Islamia University of Bahawalpur, department of Saraiki established in 1989, Bahauddin Zakariya University, in Multan, department of Saraiki established in 2006, and Allama Iqbal Open University, in Islamabad, department of Pakistani languages established in 1998), and by the district governments of Bahawalpur and Multan, as well as by the federal institutions of the Government of Pakistan like Population Census Organization and Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation.

References

  1. ↑ "Saraiki". Ethnologue.
  2. ↑ "Pakistan Census 2017" (PDF). www.pbs.pk. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
  3. ↑ Mughal, Muhammad A. Z. (1 September 2020). "Ethnicity, marginalization, and politics: Saraiki identity and the quest for a new Southern Punjab province in Pakistan". Asian Journal of Political Science. 28 (3). Routledge: 301. doi:10.1080/02185377.2020.1814360. ISSN 0218-5377.
  4. ↑ "About Punjab: Geography". Tourism Development Corporation, Government of the Punjab. Archived from the original on 2 December 2007. Retrieved 14 December 2007.
  5. ↑ "People & Culture". Government of the North-West Frontier Province. Archived from the original on 17 November 2007. Retrieved 14 December 2007.
  6. ↑ Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016: "Until recently it was considered a dialect of Panjabi."; Masica (1991, p. 443) defines Saraiki as a "new literary language"; see also Shackle (2003, pp. 585–86)
  7. ↑ Nazir, Kahut (24 May 2009). "The origin and politics of the Seraiki movement". Dawn. p. 1. Archived from the original on 26 January 2021. Retrieved 28 January 2025.
  8. ↑ Handbook of comparative and historical Indo-European linguistics ; Volume 1. Berlin Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. 2017. p. 433. ISBN 9783110393248. The five major dialects of Sindhi are Vicholi, Lari, Lasi, Thari, and Kachhi. Four dialects are spoken within the borders of Sindh itself. Siraiki, in Upper Sindh, is not to be confused with the Punjabi language of the same name. Vicholi, considered the standard dialect, is spoken in central Sindh, while Lari is the dialect in southern Sindh. Lasi is spoken on the western frontier of Sindh and in Balochistan. The Sindhi spoken in the Thar desert of the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan is called Thari. In Gujarat, Kachhi is spoken along the Rann of Kutch and in the Kathiawar peninsula.
  9. ↑ Qadeer, Mohammad (22 November 2006). Pakistan – Social and Cultural Transformations in a Muslim Nation. Routledge. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-134-18617-4. Punjab's diversity of dialects, Saraiki and Pothohari contrasting with the heartland Punjabi, was striking at the time of independence. Since then, the increased mobility of the population and the absorption of refugees from India have stimulated homogenizing tendencies both linguistically and ethnically. NWFP, although symbolically a Pashtoon is also a province of many ethnicities and languages, for example, Hindku-speaking people inhabit the Peshawar Valley and Hazara district, and Saraiki speakers are found in the Derajats.
  10. ↑ Bhatia, Tej K.; Ritchie, William C. (15 April 2008). The Handbook of Bilingualism. John Wiley & Sons. p. 803. ISBN 9780470756744.
  11. ↑ Rahman 1995, p. 3.
  12. ↑ Rahman 1995, p. 4; Shackle 1976, p. 2; Shackle 1977, p. 388
  13. ↑ Shackle 2007, p. 114.
  14. ↑ Shackle 1976, p. 24.
  15. ↑ Dani 1981, p. 36.
  16. ↑ Shackle 1977.
  17. ↑ "The Islamia University of Bahawalpur Pakistan – Department". iub.edu.pk.
  18. ↑ "Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan". bzu.edu.pk.
  19. ↑ "Department Detail". aiou.edu.pk.
  20. ↑ "History of Bahawalpur". bahawalpur.gov.pk. Archived from the original on 11 June 2012.
  21. ↑ "Introduction -City District Government Multan". multan.gov.pk.
  22. ↑ Population by Mother Tongue Archived 12 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine, website of the Population Census organization of Pakistan
  23. ↑ Saraiki News Bulletins Archived 6 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine, website of Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation

Sources